All Grown Up

Who are you? I looked into your eyes, highlighted by sky-blue eye shadow, framed by your glasses and wondered.

You've got a baby now. That's incredibly amazing. I'm jealous, if such a word is appropriate to describe the chemicals rushing through my body, making me feel emotional states like happiness, joy, completeness, loss, sadness, emptiness, satisfaction and awe.

These words fail to capture the moment I spent looking at you Sunday afternoon.

When did you turn 21? When did you grow up?

You stood there next to me for a while, nervously wearing your new adulthood like a girl who's unsure about her fancy new dress.

After sitting down next to me, we talked about your upcoming move to Colorado for your husband's job change. I saw the uncertainty in your face, wanting to assure you that being an adult with a new husband and new baby who all move to a town with strangers does not mean the world is ending.

The world of your childhood is ending, though. That's all right. Learn to embrace change and you will reward yourself with wonderfully new experiences you never thought possible.

You sat slightly bent over with your arms crossed, resting on your elbows, while fingering the ends of your short-sleeved blouse. You showed off the new necklace your husband had bought you for Mother's Day. Your earrings dangled underneath your long hair like stars seen through trees at night.

Are you really a mother? Amazing, every time I think about it. I wish you knew how lucky you are, sitting there while everyone looks at your baby daughter, making faces at her and passing her around like a playdoll. Mothers lose their special place as individuals and become carriers for passengers who get all the attention, albeit ones that were conceived, formed and birthed from their mothers' wombs.

Now you sit there and hold your baby's face up to your own, a bond that neither one of you will ever know the extent to which it'll grow. You'll watch the baby's progress, sharing the joy of the baby's first real word, first real step, and so forth.

Not so long ago I tossed you in the air, swung you around, played hide-and-seek with you and your friends, reliving my childhood through your youth, never ready to be a father, more like a big brother.

I sit here and find myself unable to express in words what you mean to me, what it means to see you there with your beautiful baby daughter, to know that you'll never be completely ready in any one moment to handle the unexpected, yet seeing that you will find a way to handle whatever comes your way.

I never really knew you and soon you'll be gone. You and I both know that childhood is such a short period that we rarely appreciate while we live it until it's suddenly over. Your childhood was shorter than mine for reasons you could not control - siblings with special needs. You gave me a chance to relive my childhood and probably didn't know it. I wish I could give you back the second childhood you gave me to make up for the nonresponsible years of youth you lost.

Because I don't know you, I can only guess what you're capable of. I have my dusty, scratched-up crystal ball in front of me, taking a chance in stealing from the gods a view of your future so that I might tell you a little bit of what's in store as you move away from all of this around us that had grown so familiar and been taken for granted.

I peer into the ball and hear your thoughts. "I don't know what I'm doing. Have I made a mistake? I have no clue. I'm scared to death I'm going to do something wrong. I'm here with this baby, this man, and this military life with which I'm not familiar. Is this a nightmare or what? Will it ever end?" I see you find resolution by researching the area around Colorado Springs, meeting other people in similar mindsets who figure out a way to get transportation to and from your home on the base so that you and your baby take daily trips into town, visiting museums, shops, Internet cafes, playgrounds, churches and other places that enrich your life and that of the one you're still establishing with a new husband and child.

In other words, you'll be all right. It's okay to make mistakes as an adult. You won't always have the right thing to say to your child or husband. You'll cry when you don't want to. You'll laugh when you shouldn't. You'll argue with your husband and child about the littlest things.

Just remember to have fun. Life is boring at times but you can still enjoy the tiny moments if you look around you with a baby's eyes.

Even though I spent time with you in your youth, I don't know you as an adult but in our time together you taught me to see the world with a refreshed view. I look at you now and wish I could tell you the wonderment you showed me when you were a child. I hope you can find the same wonderment in your baby's eyes. That's why I'm jealous. You have a second childhood to live with offspring to call your own. In this crazy world full of unnecessary distractions, it's the only thing that matters.